It's A New World Record!

I'm giving away our new favorite book - Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten here.

I have a new giveaway up for a Monopoly board game here.

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We have recently introduced the wee ones to a new game. They are absolutely loving Uno, although Mister Man has decided that he's retired for a week now because he's won too many times and it's someone else's turn.

I've yet to win. And we're absolutely not giving either of the wee ones an advantage. In fact, I've yet to even get down to Uno. We're all still having a blast with it, though.

I remember playing games growing up and having them last maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Every once in awhile, we'd have a game where we had to reshuffle the played cards because the game was going long, but it wasn't super common.

Enter the wee ones. We played a game yesterday that lasted an hour and twenty-two minutes. Today, we had a game go for well over two hours. And yes, there were multiple deck shufflings happening in both games.

Part of the reason the games go so long is because the wee ones draw past cards they could have played simply because they had a strategy. They wanted to save wild cards for the end to ensure they could go out. I wasn't the one to teach them this strategy (that would be my husband - and he soon regretted it).

Mister Man was pretty good at holding his cards in his hand - until he had too many. Little Miss had a different strategy where she'd lay all the cards facedown on the glass table and then swing underneath to see if she had any cards she could play. Mental and physicaly exercise for her.

There were times when the wee ones had more than thirty cards in their hands because somehow they were missing the color that was being played and somehow didn't have the number played either. They simply continued to draw.

I was ok with this. They had to learn that what they were doing wasn't actually helping them win in the end - with some judicious advice but not commandeering their games. It drove my husband batty. He couldn't stand watching them continue to draw. He hated seeing the game extended - again.

But really, where did we have to be? What did we have to do that was more important than playing a game with our children? What would we rather hear than the delighted squeals of joy as they once again "caught" us with a draw four or skip card?

Me? I'm hoping I'm sitting at that table again tomorrow hoping against hope that I'll be able to get to shout Uno and then play that very last card but being totally happy if I once again end the game with eighteen cards still in my hand.